The Xfce development team is pleased to announce that the second and hopefully last release candidate of the upcoming Xfce 4.4 desktop is available for download now. The release focuses primarily on bug fixes and optimizations; see the release notes for a complete list of changes. The source tarballs and the graphical installer are available from the download page.

Shakes head. I am not going around in circles. Your statement is faulty. I have stuck to one kind of bloat. Feature bloat.

A new theme is not bloat. I can't even think where you are coming from with that.

There are many types of bloat, you mix and match them at will. Thats my problem.

Feature Bloat example Netscape too many features detract from the purpose of file browsing.

Code Bloat example Vista so much code to manage, unstable. BTW in your first example you talk about dependences. Dependences mean less code bloat

File Size you picked it apart from compiler optimization binaries make up a tiny fraction of a system and often contain debug information that you can strip. It can be an indication of code bloat, but really its not a good one.

Memory footprint. This in itself is a strange one, because it plays against your other mention start-up time. XFCE allows you to load into memory KDE/Gnome Libs to allow those programs to load faster. There is all kinds of caching for speed. It often comes down to Total Memory Size vs Hard Drive speed. The only real problems are memory leaks, and duplicate items in memory, look at how Gnome is trying to reduce it memory footprint.

Application Bloat. Give it a name Windows intergrated explorer, WMP into Windows...they are always there and cannot be removed. This is your problem XFCE does not integrate them you can pick your own media player or browser, you can even pick your own calender application, file browser and replace the old one completely, and they need not be loaded into memory at startup.

your throwing different definitions of bloat around to justify your statement, and hoping one sticks, the harsh reality is often these things are at odds with each other CPU Usage vs Functionality vs Code Bloat vs Memory footprint etc etc. Its complex.

Which is why I like the simple statement.
"All the features you need and none you don't".

Shakes head. I am not going around in circles. Your statement is faulty. I have stuck to one kind of bloat. Feature bloat.
Hehe, looks to me like you just came around full circle.
And yes, you keep mumbling the same thing over and over, post after post.

A new theme is not bloat. I can't even think where you are coming from with that.

There are many types of bloat, you mix and match them at will. Thats my problem.

Feature Bloat example Netscape too many features detract from the purpose of file browsing.

Gee, are you ever dense cyclops.
He already said his piece, and you keep going on and on about the same thing.
Bloat is bloat, plain and simple. It's ONE word with ONE meaning. It only means one thing, that something is bigger than it should be.
Do you need to be drawn a picture?

BTW in your first example you talk about dependences. Dependences mean less code bloat
Oh yeah? How do you figure that? Aren't dependencies code too?

And the sad fact, which you're resisting like your life depended on it, is that XFCE has grown larger and has progressed slower than many would like.

XFCE was supposed to be a WM+maybe a light desktop.
Did they need to waste time on all those apps, the calendar, file manager etc. instead of finishing the WM first and maybe then adding some apps once the main objective was accomplished?
Just doesn't make sense to me.
And it's starting to look to me like XFCE is getting to a very awkward size. Too big for old machines and too underfeatured for new, fast machines.
Personaly, at this point I'd run something like IceWM or Flux on an old machine and just jump straight to KDE on a new machine.
Maybe use XFCE on machines in a range somewhere in between. But that's only approximately 1/3 of the market.

XFCE by its own description is a Desktop Environment. If you go to the main page http://www.xfce.org/ you will notice that the BIGGEST words on the page are "desktop environment".

XFCE is the opposite of an "awkward size". In reality I can think of several LARGE linux projects that suit a project by linux terms like XFCE, Playstation 3; Municator PC. PC's are getting faster ,but I believe in the light of "One Laptop per Child" and the drive towards UMPC's and the growing markets in the east wanting slimmer and more portable hardware, you should perhaps look a little further than what you consider the norm.

@shapeshifter.
full circle != same thing over and over.
Bloat may have one meaning, but you have to refer it to something.